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Friday, December 12, 2014

a mathematical breakthrough

I’ve been
studying architecture for almost 7 years, and I still have couple of years to
go. It’s taking me so long, mainly, because I changed countries: there was
confusing paperwork and I found myself starting the whole thing all over again.
It didn’t seem like a bad idea at 20, but nothing ever does at that age.

But I can’t
blame it all on that. Let’s see… How should I put it? “Passing all my classes
is not my forte”. It shouldn’t surprise me, really, due to my very selective memory.
I do this really cool trick in which someone asks me about electricity and I
answer with a very honest “why the fuck should I know?” and I got a 9 on a very
hard ‘Electricity Installations’ final I took last July. Hell, I don’t even
remember the names of most of the people I go to class with. What can I say? I’m
a small person with a small head, I won’t waste brain space with nonsense. I
can, however (and I’m not proud… but not embarrassed enough to avoid writing it
here) sing along every NSync song known to men and I remember perfectly Lance Bass’ birthday*,
member from said boy band who I swore to marry one day (I was 11 and he wasn’t
openly gay).

I have
always consider myself a good student. I’m fairly driven, responsible,
organized, and other cool adjectives. I don’t remember my parents really pressuring
me, at least not with punishments nor rewards, I guess they just told me that’s
how I should be… And there’s that other thing. My primary school had this
system in which, if you failed to hand 3 homework in a year, you’d get a
detention; they made it sound really scary, believe me. When I was in second or
third grade, I didn’t hand my homework twice, can’t remember what it was or
why I didn’t hand them. I do remember the third one, it was a sheet of paper
with math problems which I DID DO, GODDAMMIT! I just forgot it at home. I don’t know what detention was in your school, but in mine it consisted on going to school in the afternoon
and spending an hour in the library doing some extra work, in my case a new
sheet of math problems. It turned out it wasn’t as bad as they painted it, the worst
part was the humiliation behind it. Anyway, I was waiting for my mom to pick me up
and I saw a big frog. I think I had never seen a frog in my life, I don’t know,
but I was very excited. So I told this boy who I didn’t know, but there was no
one else around to share such a big discovery with “Hey! Look at that frog!” He
proceeded to call his friends and kill it. To this day I still think about that
frog and how if I hadn’t gone to detention that day it might still be alive. Or
not. I don’t think frogs live that long. But damn, he wouldn’t have died
because I didn’t hand my math homework. That day I learned that if I don’t do
my work someone might die.

Then I
started Architecture, and it wasn’t enough to be “fairly” anything. I had to
really set my mind to it, to the point I started wondering if I would sell one
of my brothers in exchange for a pass: they are both around the same age and
male, do I really NEED two of them? But then I realized people would be too
focused on the fact that I sold a sibling, and they wouldn’t congratulate me
for passing that really tough class. I have become someone annoyingly organized,
responsible and highly dependent on timetables, which look roughly like this:0900 . work
on constructive detail1125 . pee1126 . cry
about not knowing how to resolve that constructive detail1203 .
solve hyperstatic structure1357 . text
boyfriend about being able to solve the hyperstatic structure.14.00 pee
again

Guess what? It’s time
for another little story. This one happened around 5 years after the first one.
I failed a physics partial and I cried. I cried really hard, in school, around
my classmates. No frog died this time, but I think I was experiencing one of my
first panic attacks.

Whatever I
was feeling, I’m sure, wasn’t all that different to what I felt when, yesterday,
I found out I failed an “evaluable practice” (which is just a collegy way of
saying homework). But it’s not just a silly pointless homework (I mean, it is,
but it’s not… you know?), it’s from a class I have already failed, and I’m not
doing much better on it this second time, no matter how much effort I’m putting
into it, and how much help I’ve been seeking. So, even if it barely carries any weight
on my final grade, I can’t help but think that there must be something badly
wired inside my brain if, after all that work, I can’t manage to get a freaking
pass. By the way, no, I didn't cry about it.... At least not in front of my classmates.

I grew up seeing
my name on the Wall of Honor and with kids calling me a nerd. I kept saying it
didn’t mean anything, other than that I studied for a larger amount of time. It’s
not until now, at 24, that I realize how much of my personality I based on that
image. For some people a bad grade it’s just that, a bad grade; for me, a bad
grade it’s kind of a “you’re not who you think you are”… And I think that’s funny,
in a very tragic way.

*Lance’s
birthday is the 4th of May, if you were wondering. I do admit I had to google
it, just in case, so I wouldn’t make a fool of myself… A bigger fool, I mean.